Judge Lucy Koh Posts

Judge Lucy Koh has rejected a proposal settlement by Apple, Google, and several other tech companies that allegedly agreed not to poach each others’ employees. According to court documents, Judge Koh said that the $324 million settlement was not high enough to compensate for lost wages that employees may have suffered. The settlement was proposed in April.

LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) will have to face a lawsuit by customers who claimed the professional social network violated their privacy by accessing their external email accounts, downloading contact e-mail addresses, and soliciting businesses from those contacts as ordered by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California.

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has won a case that involves e-mail privacy. A U.S. judge has decided not to combine several lawsuits that accuses Google of violating privacy rights of hundreds of millions of e-mail users into a single class action lawsuit. On Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California said that the plaintiffs’ claims were too dissimilar to combine them into a single lawsuit. Gmail service users accused Google of violating federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws by scanning their messages in order to compile secret account profiles and enable them to receive targeted ads. There were claims raised on behalf of students at schools that use Gmail and people that do not use Gmail, but communicates with people that do.
[Source: Reuters]

Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California has made another ruling that is in favor of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Judge Koh is overseeing two patent cases between Apple and Samsung. Judge Koh determined that Samsung was infringing on an Apple patent that involves autocompletion on a keyboard. Apple holds the rights to showing both the word that has been typed with suggested autocompletes words at the same time. Samsung would likely have to pay a fine regarding this patent unless they can get it invalidated during a trial in the spring. But that’s not all…

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (KRX:005930) and Apple are entering court against each other once again after a hiatus for several months. This new trial is not about whether Samsung is infringing on Apple’s patents. Instead, it is going to focus on how much Samsung has to pay in damages.

The Walt Disney Company subsidiaries Lucasfilm and Pixar have settled a lawsuit that involves them in being a part of a consortium of Silicon Valley companies to not poach workers from rival companies, according to a bier order released by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Judge Koh said that she received a letter from lawyers in the case disclosing that the two companies settled their part of a contested case, which leaves five companies in the litigation.

Remember when Samsung Electronics was ordered to pay Apple $1.05 billion? Apple asked Judge Lucy Koh to have that amount tripled, but she denied that request. However Samsung was also denied the right to have a new trial even though it was determined that the company did not willfully infringe Apple’s iPad patents.

In a civil lawsuit that was filed against by five technology workers against Apple, Google, Intel, and other companies, it was revealed that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had threatened to file a patent lawsuit against Palm if they did not agree to stop poaching his employees. The five employees allege that this was an illegal conspiracy to eliminate competition for each other’s employees and drove down wages. These tech companies tried to keep documents around employee retention secret. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh had rejected parts of that request.